


and my body bears this trouble

by skvadern



Series: skvadern does the heart of aphrodite [2]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Post-Canon, Returning Home, The Heart of Aphrodite 2021, Trauma, implied off-screen breakup, the beginnings of healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:42:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29297565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skvadern/pseuds/skvadern
Summary: Azu should be happy to have come home, and so she is, and that’s all there is to it.For The Heart of Aphrodite Day 2: Healing - Reconciliation - Hurt/Comfort
Series: skvadern does the heart of aphrodite [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2149617
Comments: 14
Kudos: 19
Collections: The Heart of Aphrodite





	and my body bears this trouble

**Author's Note:**

> look sometimes u fall in love with a compassionate, strong and loving character and u want to break her a lil and then write her slowly putting herself back together again.  
> title from starlight by the wailin jennys

The bed beneath her is wonderfully solid, and Azu drifts up from sleep with a strange ease, even as she becomes aware of a cramped ache in her thighs and shins. Eyes still closed, she stretches lazily, luxuriating in the pull of her muscles.

That is, until she almost falls out of bed.

She bolts upright, clutching at the heavy woven blanket she now recognises, the patterns and the smell so deeply infused in her memory. Head lurching, she almost tumbles off the bed again – it’s _tiny_ , nowhere near the right size for her.

But of course it is. She’d arrived so late, after all, and it’s been years since her cousin moved into her old bed. She’d offered to sleep on the floor – would probably have been more comfortable on the floor – but her father had insisted that his hero daughter would get a bed for the night, even if the only one they could offer her was built for a child.

She swings her stiff, sore legs onto the floor and into her sandals, and for a second she considers calling down Aphrodite’s blessing – but no, that’s frivolous and stupid, especially when she might _need_ that divine blessing later. Instead, she stretches the mundane way, breathing deep in the pre-dawn hush. Her folks rise with the sun, like most farmers, but the sun won’t be up for a while yet, and after the welcome-home party last night she’ll probably have even longer to herself.

It’s not that she doesn’t want to see her family, her friends, all the other people she grew up with. Of course she does. That’s why she came home in the first place. It’s just… peaceful, right now, with nobody around to ask her questions or give her looks heavy with emotion, or throw their arms around her when she’s not expecting it. That’s all.

The room she’d been put in has a door that opens onto the garden, so at least she can slip out into the pre-dawn dim without having to sneak past her parents. She’s still no stealthier than she was when she left home, and she’s frankly given up on ever learning. Some things, you need other people for.

Just as she’d hoped, the village is all but deserted, and she manages to dodge the few people emerging from their homes. Her feet take her a familiar route, circling round to the back of the homes, behind Aunt Mwamini’s house on the village outskirts. Here, in front of the patch of dirt between her aunt’s garden and the forest, the ground falls away into a sheer cliff. Even shrouded in blue half-light, the view down to the thickly forested valley floor is breath-taking.

Groaning under her breath, she sinks down to sit cross-legged on the cool earth, leaning back on her palms. Lady, she’s missed this view, and seeing it again is a blissfully uncomplicated joy. The morning mists are just beginning to rise up to wreathe the trees, birdcalls and the hoots of monkeys echoing up to her. A breeze washes over her face, cool and green-smelling, and Azu lets her eyes fall closed again.

“Good morning, Azubuike.”

Azu is halfway to her feet, heart pounding and every muscle tensed, before she realises she knows the voice. The tall, lean woman standing over her raises one thin eyebrow, and Azu sinks back to the ground, a hand to her chest like she can pet her heart into calming.

“Auntie,” she mutters, abashed. She hadn’t even heard Mwamini walking up; how could she have zoned out so completely? She can’t afford to get complacent –

Except she can. Except she’s home, and she has nothing to fear.

Aunt Mwamini flicks a smile, like she knows exactly what Azu’s thinking, and sinks down next to her. The movement is graceful; the percussion of cracking joints less so. Azu bites her tongue hard on a hysterical little giggle.

“Mock an old woman, would you?” Mwamini jibes, but she’s smiling, and Azu feels her shoulders begin to loosen. She lets her head roll back, tilting up to study the lightening sky. This close to sunrise, it’s striping with colours that shift and melt into each other even as Azu watches.

She hadn’t exactly forgotten, how quickly the sun rises and sets here. She just… has gotten used to other sunrises.

“Doing alright there, my girl?”

The question makes Azu jump a little, interrupting her reverie. “Of course,” she says, a little faster than she meant to. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Mwamini shrugs carelessly. “Last night, you didn’t seem to be having the best time.”

“I…” Azu bites her lip. “It was fine. It’s just strange, having not seen them all for a while.” _Strange_ is perhaps not the most accurate word, but nobody needs to hear the alternatives. Azu should be happy to have come home, and so she is, and that’s all there is to it.

“Why did you come back, if it’s so _strange_?” Mwamini is studying her unashamedly, those almost-black eyes sharp as flint blades.

Azu blinks. “Why wouldn’t I? I wanted to see my family, let them know I was alright.”

That makes Mwamini chuckle, and Azu has no idea why. “Very selfless. You were always a good girl, Azubuike. It didn’t surprise me at all when you found a calling. Even when you left Chinua, I wasn’t surprised. You were meant for greater things than this little place.”

“There’s nothing wrong with –“ Azu protests, but Mwamini waves her hand.

“Oh, I know that, child. But from what I hear, you’ve saved the world. Rather more impressive than raising some goats, eh?”

“Not to the goats,” Azu murmurs, her cheeks burning. She’d forgotten that Mwamini never sweetens her words, never says anything she doesn’t mean.

Mwamini chuckles. “Still can’t take a compliment either, I see. Well, you’re still young, you have time to work on that.”

The mountains stretch out in the distance, ageless and vast. Azu keeps her eyes on them as she murmurs “I don’t feel young.”

Cold metal lands on her skin – Mwamini’s claw of a hand, the one that so awes all the children. It’s not just that it’s a prosthetic – a few children are rude about that, but there’s a smattering of people in this and surrounding villages with wooden limbs. Mwamini’s hand, though, is special; formed from rods of a gleaming, hard metal that never seems to rust, twisted into intricate braided patterns. It responds almost perfectly to the play of muscles in the arm it’s anchored to, and functions more gracefully than any prosthetic Azu has seen except for Zolf’s.

A gift, or so the village gossip mill said, from a genius inventor the younger Mwamini’s adventuring party had saved. Not that she’d ever confirmed it. All Azu knows for sure is that Aunt Mwamini had left the village as a young woman, and had returned a decade later with a fine metal hand and more wealth than anyone around here had ever seen.

Deep in Mwamini’s dark eyes, Azu can see understanding genuine that it physically hurts her.

“You won’t feel young,” Mwamini tells her quietly, “but feelings lie, Azubuike. You’ve got so many years ahead of you, don’t waste them feeling like your best days are behind you.” She snorts. “Or at least, try not to. Gods know I wouldn’t have listened if you’d told me the same at your age.”

“Does it get easier?” Azu whispers, and the tiny smile she gets in return brings a hard lump to her throat.

“Eventually, for some people. But you already know you can carry far more than most. You can carry this too.” There’s no doubt in Mwamini’s voice, just confidence warm as a fire banked to burn through the night.

The lump in Azu’s throat has turned corrosive, burning so fiercely she can barely take a breath. Mwamini doesn’t look like she expects an answer, anyway, so Azu can concentrate on blinking back her tears.

Far, far away, the sun slips over the mountains, and Azu watches it rise, slowly but surely, to its seat in the clouds. The colours fade into brilliant blue, and from behind them, the old familiar sounds of her village coming to life filter into Azu’s ears.

The world didn’t end. Strange, how something so obvious can feel like such a surprise sometimes.

“Where are those friends of yours, then?” Mwamini asks, after Azu’s breathing has been steady for a while. “You’ve got to keep your people around you, Azubuike, the ones who understand. That’s important.”

 _Where are your people, then?_ Azu very definitely doesn’t ask. There’s a story in the bitter twist of Mwamini’s smile that she doesn’t think she wants to hear. “Hamid’s in Egypt, visiting his own family, and Howard is visiting a few old colleagues in Cairo. Cel is somewhere in England with James, on the coast I think, and Oscar and Zolf were in Mauritius last I heard. Skraak and the other kobolds are back with their clan in Japan – I think Cel stayed with them for a bit, before they followed James to England.”

She almost starts saying _Kiko is_ but the name sticks in her throat. Wherever Kiko is, it’s definitely not her business anymore. Another regret for the pile.

Mwamini blinks at her. “Well, that’s rather spread out.”

“Not when you’re friends with a teleporter,” Azu replies. “Einstein claims to be retired now, but so long as we give him a good meal and some decent travel recommendations, he’s happy to give us lifts when we need them.”

“Good,” Mwamini says, nodding. “Make sure you use that, now. Once you’re done visiting here, go see one of them. Or go see the one you stopped yourself from mentioning. Maybe especially them.”

Azu glares at her, and wishes she could be a petty child, stamp her feet and tell Mwamini she couldn’t possibly understand. Ask her how she could know how Azu had screwed it up.

She’d thought she was doing the right thing, pushing Kiko away. Why doesn’t that ever make something hurt any less?

“What if,” she starts, slowly and carefully, “she doesn’t want to hear from me again?”

“Has she told you that?” Mwamini presses, and Azu resists the urge to snarl.

“She doesn’t need to,” she replies instead, fighting to keep her voice level. “I know what I did.”

For a few seconds, there’s no reply, and Azu twists to see Mwamini studying her, sharp and assessing. Then she huffs. “I don’t say this often, child, so mind me when I say that you need to be a bit nicer to yourself.”

Azu snorts bitterly, which gets her a slap across the shin. “Sorry, Auntie,” she mutters.

“You should listen to me, girl,” Mwamini huffs. “Didn’t your grizzled adventurer friends teach you to respect your elders?”

Azu’s not sure what makes her laugh harder – the idea of someone calling Zolf grizzled to his face, or someone calling _Hamid_ grizzled to _his_. Either way, she loses it for a bit, great whoops of laughter that surprise her as much as they do the birds in the trees around them.

“There, see?” Mwamini says, like she’s proved some sort of point. “You can carry it.” She waves with her metal hand, at where the sun is blooming over the horizon. “One sunrise at a time.”

~~~~~

Azu’s parents aren’t up yet – she can hear her dad’s snores from outside as she passes by – so she slips through the back door into her room, sitting heavily on the tiny bed. For a moment, she just puts her face in her hands and breathes in the quiet dimness. She hadn’t been exactly been prepared for a conversation with Aunt Mwamini, but honestly, nobody ever is.

When she’s a bit steadier, she fishes the small writing case out of her pack; a fine rosewood thing Hamid had pressed upon her before they parted. One finger traces over the silk-smooth wood, concentrating on the texture, the intricate carvings; trying not to think too hard about what she means to do with it.

Finally she unclasps it and picks out the pen – one of those magic ones that don’t require an inkwell, honestly, how much had Hamid spent on this? – and a sheet of paper. She lays the paper out carefully on the lid of the box, takes the pen in a hand that’s far more used to an axe handle these days, and stares at its awful blankness.

“Come on, Azu,” she mutters, when a minute has gone by and the page is still empty. “It’s only a letter.” She flinches from the impatience in her own voice, then the stupidity of that occurs to her and she claps her hand over her mouth to quiet her giggle.

_Oh Lady, what a mess I am._

Closing her eyes, Azu breathes, steadying herself. Thinks about what Mwamini said, about being kind to herself. Thinks about what her Goddess, the goddess of love, would want from her – and as the thought crosses her mind, she swears she catches the faintest edge of rose-scent in the air.

“Alright,” she murmurs, making her tone as soft as she can, as if she’s talking to someone else. Someone who needs her kindness. “You can do this, you’re strong enough to do this.”

She opens her eyes, and tentatively reaches out to write _Dear Kiko_ at the top of the page.

“Good…” She coughs, trying to clear her throat, but her voice is still strangled when she whispers “good job. I’m proud of you.”

That feels… nice. Warm, in her chest. Maybe, just maybe, Mwamini might have a point. She smiles, and for the first time in a while, it doesn’t feel completely false.


End file.
